Hurt Oneshot
by Chicken Scratchings
Summary: Tomorrow, you’re Dad’s going to do something that’s going to hurt you. How do you forgive that?"


"_**Tomorrow, you're Dad's going to do something that's going to hurt you. How do you forgive that?"**_

_You don't know the answer to that. Even after all these years._

Thirteen years old. It had been a bad week. Bad month. Bad year. Every day you expect things to turn around. 'It's only a bad spot, we'll pass through it and things will get better.' You tell this to yourself everyday and yet, as each night passes with more screaming, more bracing for impact, more arms raised above your head to protect from the blows, what little faith you have drains away. Your brother stays hidden in the airing cupboard, still small enough to fit behind the pipes and boiler. He knows to keep quiet. He doesn't get in the way, and as a reward, he only has to suffer hearing the abuse.

You haven't hid in the cupboard for over six years. The tight squeeze would never permit two to shelter there.

And besides, you have your mother to think of.

Tonight is a Wednesday. Your father gets home later than usual, and more drunk. Usually he saves the heavy drinking for the cover of home. It wouldn't do to let the neighbours see. Keeping up appearances is important. 'The nice Catholic Booth family, husbands a barber, don't you know? Wife's a quiet lady, but I guess she's just tired. She has those two boys to look after, nice kids but boys will be boys, and they must be a handful. Still, they're a pleasant family; you'll see them at Church on Sunday. Oh yes, they never miss a week.'

No. You never do miss a week. Even if you have to help your mother carry your passed out father into the car and wake him up on the way to service.

He always did get away without a hangover.

But back to the part where it's Wednesday night and your mother's futile attempts to save the dinner for your late father have ended in a burnt chicken meal and a bitter husband. You stand at the sink, cleaning up the dishes, your soapy hands gripping the edge of the dinner plate so hard that your knuckles are turning white. You have your back to the table, but you can hear it all in perfect clarity.

"What the fucking hell do you call this? It's black! Do you think I'm an idiot? A fucking retard? Chicken isn't meant to be black, or did you just think I wouldn't notice?" His voice, only slightly slurred from the drink, rips through the tense air like a scalpel across the jugular. "I work my ass off all day and you can't even be fucked to spend 10 minutes making me a decent meal when I get home?"

You don't need to look to know that your mother is crying. You can hear her badly contained sobs as her body shakes with the wasted exertion of keeping back tears. Her head is bowed forwards, leading the rest of her body to follow in a slump so deep that it seems as if her whole body has collapsed in on itself. Her thin frame looks gaunt in the low, late-evening light and the bruises stand out like war paint on her pale skin.

You hear the chair scrape across the soft linoleum floor, and turn your head slightly to see your father rise to his feet, steadying his unbalanced weight on the table with both hands. His whole body is tensed and his face could breed thunder.

"What? Now I don't even get an answer?" His voice has reached the volume that makes your ears bleed, and you know that you only have seconds to step in before your mother has another trip to the ER after falling down the stairs.

Hurriedly you drop the plate into the sink and beg "Dad-"

Without warning he grabs the dinner plate off the table and hurls it at your head with a bestial roar. Fortunately his drunken aim isn't perfect and although you get hit by burnt chicken, the plate misses your skull and smashes off the wall behind you, shattering into porcelain shards. A couple hit back like shrapnel and slice deep cuts into your exposed cheek and shoulder.

"Michael!" your mother cries out, despair ringing through her weak voice.

Immediately his attention snaps back to your mother, and there's a glint in his eye now, something dark and satisfied. "Ah, so now you can fucking speak!"

The momentary panic that had loosened your mothers tongue vanishes and she once again sinks inwards. He steps towards her and she doesn't even bother to protest anymore.

Like a martyr without belief, she embodies resigned acceptance, and barely even manages a whispered beg of "Michael..." before she braces for the fist she knows is about to be raised to her.

Without thought you speed through the short distance between you and your parents and smack his fist down with one of your own.

The full force of his fury turns to you and the rage in his eyes is malignant and all-consuming. He no longer sees his son. He doesn't see, doesn't think; just allows the anger to envelope him like a blazing fire, igniting his blood with self-righteous fury. His shouts are incoherent as he brings a powerful fist down on your jaw.

He may be drunk but his reflexes are a force to be reckoned with; you barely manage to brace yourself before another fist smacks hard into your stomach. Your vision washes out in white and you fall backwards. You hit the ground with a bone shattering crack and lie sprawled on your back, arms raised above your head to protect from the seemingly infinite rage.

He straddles you and sits heavily on your stomach as he rains down punch after punch onto your face and chest. The pain drives away any conscious line of thought and soon you resign yourself to the pummelling, not even bothering to fight back. Your head reels from the intense pain, throbbing with such ferocity that you swear you can see the blood swimming through your eyes.

As another fist comes swinging from the left you turn you head away to shield your face. From that position, face set in a hard mask of clenched teeth and unblinking eyes, you see, through the gaps between your upraised arms, your mother watching on from behind your father.

She makes no move towards you. Her face reveals more to you than you ever wanted to see. She feels horrendous fear, but the fear is not for you. There is relief etched into her expression that she should be saved this night of anger and suffering, and she does not try to stop what is happening before her. Instead she clings to herself, unyielding, sinking into the background like a ghost who can only observe and never touch.

You catch her eye, between the winces and the punches and the screwed up eyes against the pain, and you see, you _know_ that you have lost her forever. Because what you see in those eyes is not sadness, or regret at your pain, or exasperation that she is powerless to prevent your suffering. No, only one emotion is staring back at you and you can read it as easily as if she had said the words out loud.

'_Better you than me_.'

Just as you see this, your father, still screaming profanities and tired of using only fists, reaches up to the counter and grabs the neck of the empty whisky bottle. With a roar of 'Piece of shit!' the thick glass smashes across your skull.

Lightning pain shocks through your body, and amongst the raining glass, and blood, and pain, and snarling abuse, finally the darkness descends and you succumb willingly to the black bliss of unconsciousness.

________

You lie in bed. Well, on it. You haven't got under the covers, but instead lay fully clothed on your back, staring at the patterns the shadows make on your ceiling, the full moon seeping cool light through your window.

You're so sick of feeling. So sick of feeling everything and nothing, like your body is overflowing, but your soul is desolate and barren; an empty shell. You can see the ceiling, but you can't see anything at all.

You're head won't shut up. There's a screaming river of mindless, emotion-fuelled thoughts cascading their own paths through your brain. Each one fractures like a crack in a cliff, shooting through you like bullets through veins.

Your head is so loud that it all fades away into white noise.

And your only conscious line of thought is "Lord, please make me numb."

_________

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What did you think? Please let me know by clicking that lovely little button with the word 'Review' on it  Thanks for bothering to read my ramblings. This is strictly oneshot, but I hope you liked it anyway.


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